The present invention relates to telecommunications, and more particularly to data mining of outgoing calls in a telecommunications system based on called party identity.
Businesses have long desired to leverage their advertising expenditures to get the greatest return. One way of doing so is to selectively target recipients of a business""s advertising. For instance, a local pizza parlor may wish to mail advertising to people likely to order pizza. Realizing that people living many miles away would not be likely to order pizza from them, the pizza parlor, or more typically an advertising service acting on behalf of the pizza parlor, would access a database of addresses to filter down the mailing list to a more appropriate target audience. The advertising would then be mailed to the people living in the right areas.
While this approach to advertising helps control costs somewhat, it may still not be properly tailored for the business. For instance, the pizza parlor may not wish to send coupons to existing customers, but instead offer coupons only to people who have been ordering pizzas from a competitor. Or, the pizza parlor may want to target only those people who typically order pizza from competitors after 9:00 at night, so as to increase utilization of the pizza parlor""s existing resources. However, determining who has been ordering from a competitor, and possibly when, is problematic with prior art techniques. Competitors are obviously unwilling to share customer data. Surveys, whether telephonic or mall-intercept, are often viewed by consumers as unwelcome, even intrusive. Thus, businesses must rely on fairly non-specific information when making advertising decisions.
One aspect of the present invention focuses on gathering information about what businesses are being called by a user (or users). A database of call information is generated based on outgoing calls. When a called number is received from a user, the present invention determines whether the called party associated with the called number is a business, such as by consulting a reverse directory service. Preferably, the present invention determines not only that the called number is associated with a business, but also the type of business. If the called number is associated with a business, the call information, or information about a plurality of such calls, is stored. If the called number is not associated with a business, the information is not stored, so as to protect privacy. The stored call information may later be shared with interested third parties, such as advertising services.
In another aspect of the present invention, outgoing calls are filtered for calls to selected called numbers. If a call is initiated to one of these select numbers, the present invention notifies appropriate third parties of the call, giving suitable information about the call. The third party may be a competitor of the business that was called or some other third party subscriber to the data mining service. Based on this call information, such as when the call was placed and the duration of the call, some inferences about the nature of the call can be made. These inferences may then be used to provide the caller with additional useful services that the third party may offer. For instance, armed with the call information, the third party may generate advertising directed at the calling party in response to being informed about the call, such as by emailing the calling party an electronic coupon or a notice about a current or upcoming sale.